From Locksmith to High Tech Entrepreneur
Growing up, I was always passionate about life and constantly trying new things. I hated following the rules, I didn’t finish high school, and never in my life did I dare dream that I’d be running a thriving startup.
Well, here I am 20 years later, running a successful business in the high tech world, and all I can say is — have ambitions and dare to dream.
The Good Old Days
It all started when I met Saar Kohanovitch (cofounder of Workiz) at the age of 15. We were best friends, surfers and DJs. He introduced me to Erez Marom, now the cofounder and CTO of Workiz. In 2003, it seemed like nearly every Israeli was moving to the U.S., so we decided to try it out too. But soon after arriving, I struggled with the direction I wanted to take in life. I hadn’t gone to college, and needed to find a job that didn’t require a degree.
One thing led to another, and I soon found myself in the locksmith industry. Learning the trade wasn’t too difficult and I was excited to realize that I was good at it. Like really good. I told all of my Israeli friends about it, and soon we were all working as locksmiths. One day it hit us — why not just start our own business? We had the skills, industry knowledge and the passion. Little did we know the challenges that lay ahead…
Beginning the Entrepreneurial Journey
Without thinking twice, we opened our own locksmith business. We were small in size, but determined in spirit; nothing could bring us down. Getting established in the local area was a challenge, and we had to think outside the box in order to stand out. I used to drive around to all of the local gas stations and offer them $20 each time they would call me to come when someone got locked out of their car at the gas station.
With growth came growing pains, but also lessons that would lead us to success. At the time, advertising was everything for us. As a part of our advertising strategy, we reached out to Yellow Pages, that demanded 50% of their annual fee up front. We were 24-years-old, and that meant a lot of money for us. I knew that if we were going to invest our savings into this, we had to know what we were getting in return. Yellow Pages didn’t have a way of tracking the ROI, so we created a way. With each new ad, we bought a new cell phone and provided a new cell phone number. By tracking the number of calls each phone was getting, we could see where the best leads were coming from. But we didn’t stop there. We decided to ditch the phones and just build our own CRM and phone system. When Yellow Pages came back the next year and demanded a huge advertising fee, we were able to show them the results their ads were bringing in, which did not justify the price they were demanding. They were shocked, but matched the lower quote we offered. It was a moment of glory I’ll never forget.
Months turned into years, and it wasn’t long before our locksmith business was operating in three different states and everybody we knew was working for us. I learned that with the right vision and business strategy, and a consistent approach, the sky’s the limit.
Eventually, we decided to sell our locksmith business because we were ready to move on to our next challenge. We received a million dollar offer and immediately took it. Stories of our success spread quickly, and our friends began reaching out to us for help and advice with their businesses. The requests quickly started pouring in. Along this journey of helping others, a new, more colossal ambition emerged. We realized that these service businesses needed a cloud-based solution to help them streamline their operations, similar to the one we had developed for ourselves back in the day. These companies were losing time and money by managing their businesses using a pen and paper instead of running their operations efficiently with automated software. What started out as a passing thought, soon became a concrete reality. And just like that, Send-A-Job was born.
Send-A-Job was created for small- to medium-sized, on-demand field service professionals to provide them with all the tools needed to manage their businesses, increase their revenues and improve the customer experience. It helps business owners schedule jobs, invoice and get paid in the field easily, send automatic client notifications, track ads to increase ROI, and much more.
The Turning Point to Tech
Like most businesses, the beginning was slow. The first year, we were just fine-tuning our product to attract the first 50 customers. Then, we signed on a few big locksmith companies and it began to accelerate from there. By 2016, we had about 350 customers. Our product was able to drive rapid growth because it directly solved a problem that our customers were facing. Field service businesses knew how to get a job done, but they didn’t have a technical solution for automating and managing their business. That’s where we came in. As soon as they realized how much money and time our product would save them, they were immediately interested.
At that point, we were all married and decided it was time to move back to Israel. Once we returned, we sought out Adi “Didi” Azaria, the cofounder of Sisense. Didi was known for helping startups, and we wanted his guidance on expanding the business. He agreed. In our initial meeting, the first thing he said to us was, “Send-A-Job? That’s a terrible name for software.” From that point, we hit it off. Send-a-Job became Workiz, and Didi became our CEO. He introduced us to Aleph, which recognized our potential and invested in us. Three years later, we’ve quadrupled in size and are continuing to grow rapidly. I would attribute this growth to hard work, focus and a strong drive. We are a team of doers. We get an idea and run towards execution without looking back.
Creating Growth
I’m someone who’s empowered by generating change and progress. It’s truly fulfilling when something you’ve created has an impact on other people’s lives. The ripple effect of Workiz and how it affects businesses throughout the U.S. is amazing. Besides enabling field service owners to increase their revenue by over 22%, Workiz has helped small businesses to thrive, even in their first few years of operation. While 75% of small businesses close within their first five years of operation, businesses using Workiz are able to slash that number down to just 20%.
This keeps us motivated and powering through no matter what.
From my experience, there are three important things to remember at the beginning stages of a startup.
First, the most important lesson I’ve learned is that failure is a stepping stone to success. Have the patience and determination you need to push through to the other side.
Second, your team is crucial. Surround yourself with experts whose strengths balance your weaknesses. It creates the most powerful team.
Finally, talk to your customers. A lot. The ultimate “win” will come from understanding how your customers think, feel and use your product.
These points might seem obvious, but when you’re running a hectic startup, you have to stay focused on those essential things that will drive you to success.
So keep focused. Push forward. Don’t stop. And celebrate every small achievement. Because it’s the small achievements that lead to big victories!
This blog was published by Aleph. Aleph is an early stage venture capital fund and equal partnership focused on partnering with great Israeli entrepreneurs to build large, meaningful companies and impactful global brands.
